Fracture
by hopeisabluebird
Summary: After Fifth, Sam sees in broken color and severe lines all leading back to her. New Order through Threads.


**A/N: This was supposed to be a small one-shot detailing what I thought was missing from New Order Parts I and II. It ended up becoming one of my longest stories, and spans season eight. **

**Spoilers: Pretty much anything from season eight. I mean it. Also Divide and Conquer, Abyss, and other obvious Sam/Jack episodes. **

**Disclaimer: I do not own Stargate.**

**A thousands thanks to my awesome betas, blindingfirefly and Kpasa. I couldn't have finished this without your help!  
**

**Fracture**

She wonders why he didn't kill her.

It wasn't humanity (_she_ _doesn't know what kind of upside-down pride pushes her to call it that_) which held him back. She thinks he may have finally learned (_but who taught him? which one of the four was it?_) there was more than one way to take a life. The weight of another choice settles across her shoulders, and she wonders if this one will be the one to break them.

She missed another chance, her cool adeptness with numbers and molecules causing her to leave behind the shattered remnants of human baggage again. _Single-minded to the point of social isolation_ was her high school guidance counselor's careful assessment. _Too damn focused on a stupid tree to see the forest_ was her father's more candid opinion.

She can't find what miscalculation she made this time.

She slowly pulls her hand up, and rubs the tip of her thumb across the scars. They stretch across her forehead, four small puckers of skin inched close together along her hairline and a fifth one above her right eye, pulling at the skin. Even now, if she creases her brow, she can feel a slow, wet trickle down her nose and cheeks. They feel like tears, but she knows if the liquid trails seep along the edge of her mouth, she'll taste something like bitter copper. The edges are rigid, and she has the fleeting thought that she probably should ask for stitches. Only these are wounds no one else can see. She wonders if that may have been the point.

She looks up and sees Daniel staring at her, his eyes magnified behind the frames of his glasses. He's holding his breath, and she knows he's waiting, waiting to see if his soul can stretch to accommodate whatever it was she saw and heard out there. Teal'c's face is impassive, a time-honored Jaffa mask of smooth, solid granite, but she feels the warmth of his hands as he lifts her head from the dirt and leaves. The Colonel kneels in front of her, and she swallows. She reaches out her hand, wondering if it will pass right through him (_he's another ghost, another incomplete future, the sum total of Replicator programming inside her mind_).

She cannot bring herself to touch his skin, certain (_mathematical probabilities do not lie_) all feeling in her fingers will drain, and her dead skin will fuse to an icy shell holding the remnants of a human soul. Instead she grabs his shirt sleeve, the coarseness of olive-green cloth chafing her already raw skin. It feels real enough, but then, she's learned not to trust what she can feel, see, hear.

She guesses Fifth stole that from her too.

"You okay?" he asks.

She blinks. A dozenhundredthousand words bubble around the edge of her tongue, choking the wild keen straining against her chest. She wants to cry … scream … but given what she's seen and heard, she's not even sure the words will be her own (_Goa'uld Egyptian Ancient engulf the English words, drowning technical jargon and perfect equations and I-have-an-idea like so much wreckage in the shipwreck of her mind_). Her mouth dries and she swallows grains of Abydos dust. She closes her eyes, and there, in the very back of her mind, her own voice murmurs. _It's too much. _

Instead, she hears herself say, "Nice to see you, sir." His eyes brighten and the corners of his mouth quirk in a half-way smile. There must be enough left of her that's still whole if she can continue speaking their language, their private idiom of charged euphemism and understatement (_a baldly direct dialect – the perfect correspondence of word and meaning – erupts only after force fields and mind stamps. Apparently Replicators don't compel that level of honesty_).

"Likewise," he says.

She smiles a close-mouthed smile, and thinks the Colonel may be more tired (_or more relieved_) than she thought at first. His military instinct, inbred after years spent smothered in Black ops and carefully-preserved secrecy, is to annoy and poke and prod in a viciously controlled bid to uncover what anyone around him may be hiding, convinced the truth rides on blasts of sound and fury. The quickest way to lose people is to make decisions based on limited information. It's straightforward and almost as ingrained in him as _no one gets left behind_.

Yet he never stops to wonder why she never answered his question.

S

On Thor's ship she feels warm for the first time since sitting with Teal'c on their way to the Asgard (_She remembers black tank tops and small talk made awkward as only it can between two long-time friends. She forgets sometimes how alien Teal'c still is_). She doesn't know why. The cool-gray metal wall is hard, not bowing against the pressure of her back. She closes her eyes and leans into the silence, absent of the sentient hum of Replicator walls.

"Are you well, MajorCarter?"

She turns her head and sees Teal'c. He's standing against the wall opposite to her, arms crossed against his chest. Daniel is slouched against the door, head against his chest, glasses askew. He looks up when Teal'c speaks. His brows crease when he sees her huddled against the wall, knees drawn up, hands clasped white around them. She doesn't move, knowing if she relaxes, they'll know.

"He didn't hurt me," she whispers, surprised to find her words are less of a lie than she thought. She smiles gently and Teal'c bows his head.

S

Her mission report is one of the shortest she's ever written.

She thinks she ought to be a little embarrassed. It sits beneath a growing stack of almost neat files and maps, and her stomach twists. Maybe she should have thrown in some technobabble. For old time's sake. General Hammond, for all his flexibility, was a military man. He required detailed reports with Technicolor diagrams,accompanying footnotes, and glossaries of technical words. In triplicate. General O'Neill doesn't care. His inflexible determination to summarize bullet points, to simplify an issue to basic tactical terms (_Will it save Earth?_) is notorious. She thinks she could break it down into fragments simple enough to please even him.

_Captured by Fifth. He won_.

But it isn't like any of them could tell. The three of them (_she mourns Daniel's loss of innocence, the new instincts seeped so deep in his skin, he doesn't realize they're there_) had given her an abrupt, military once-over, searching with their eyes for bruises, torn clothing, glazed eyes, slurred speech. Anything to point past the stale scent of fear to its source. But mind-rape and nightmares and unfamiliar memories leave few traces, and she doesn't bother to voice what the ghosts in her head are screaming for her to say.

It isn't about her, and she's determined not to miscalculate again.

She jerks when the General says something. She's tucked against the wall in the general's office. It's a new position for her. Usually Daniel is in the middle, Teal'c in the back, she next to O'Neill. It's always how they arrange themselves – on-world and off. She wonders what it means when she moves back to protect their six. She tries to tell herself its just phase one of the inevitable shifts the team will have to make to accommodate the General's promotion. Operation Blow the Old Order to Hell. Turns out Fifth didn't break the team apart after all. In a painful twist of irony, Earth-bound politics took care of it for him.

(_She hears the tick tock tick tock of the countdown inside her mind_).

"I've spent my whole life stickin' it to the man. If I do this, I'll be the man. I don't think I can be the man," he says. She releases a breath she didn't know she'd been holding because she can predict what each of them will say. Not everything has changed.

"You'll be inheriting a pretty big can of worms with the state of affairs out there," she says, a rapid assessment of probability and intergalactic diplomacy forcing her to strain against the edge of possible disaster, where the destruction of Earth is just one of thousands of equally horrifying outcomes. The General requires omniscience within the limitations of her specialty. Her job is to over-think, alternating every risk with what-if and suppose-this-happens. _Identify the worst-case scenario. Find the solution_.

There's always a Plan B.

"If Ba'al truly is on the verge of dominance over the System Lords, we face a formidable challenge ahead," says Teal'c, using his old tactic of smuggling in advice while stating the obvious.

She opens her mouth to comment on the current balance of power among the System Lords when her mind slams against the unknown variable, the one probability that could overwhelm her equation with imaginary numbers and false solutions. Her forehead splits open, and she feels the wet trickle of blood from half-healed scars again, but she has to say it. Division of labor. It's her responsibility. "Plus, who knows where and when Fifth and the other Replicators will turn up," she says, waiting for the words to trigger whatever Trojan horse she may be carrying. Her mouth is dry. She swallows, but there is only silence in her mind.

Teal'c acknowledges her concern, but the General casually jots it down on whatever imaginary list he's keeping behind his eyes. Daniel doesn't even blink. Her stomach feels hollow.

Daniel says something, but she misses it because the General looks at her (_or not at her, but through her_), eyes glazed with the weight of his choice. She blinks, and wonders if there is anything left to say.

_Help me_.

But _no one gets left behind_ chokes her plea, and she_ knows_. She can't tell them. Not now. The team is more important than _tick tock tick tock_.

Then she hears it. Her ears are buzzing, so she misses the cadence of familiar speech, but she knows what being rescued sounds like. She's surprised when the words force themselves out of her own mouth (_she's not normally the comedic relief_), "If you don't take the job, we could end up with someone much worse."

It takes her a moment to realize the words are hers because she hears them in Daniel's voice. She cringes as the tension and seriousness dissipate, wondering if her salvation could be her destruction, but the team accepts the faux pas with smiles as they've stretched to accommodate many things over the years. It's so much a part of them they don't recognize the voice isn't hers. She mumbles an apology and doesn't say anything else (_but there is no more talk of Replicators_).

She wonders what the memories will do to them.

(_His hidden time bomb still ticks towards zero_).

S

Well, that was unexpected.

_I couldn't do it without her_.

It wasn't precisely what he said, of course, but the words were buried beneath, and she heard them anyway. She chokes on the debris of failure, and wants to come clean. _It wasn't me. It's never been me_. But Teal'c stands at her back, straight and proud. And Daniel, if he knew she wanted to grab the military wings and give them to someone else – anyone else – would glance away, embarrassed at public displays of emotion, almost … almost as if he could deal with anything, as long as she was polite.

But Lieutenant Colonel Samantha Carter? She thinks Fifth would laugh.

"Many regards on occasion of your promotion, ColonelCarter," says Teal'c gravely, and she jumps. He gently pats her back in the Jaffa version of a hug, and she wonders if he knows what's coming.

"Yeah, Sam," says Daniel. "This is really great. Congratulations."

She smiles vaguely and excuses herself as soon as she can. She needs to get home. Call Cassie. Clean out her refrigerator. Eat real food for once. Daniel nods and says he understands. She wonders if he does.

"Going home so soon, Carter?" She hears his voice at the elevator and stops.

"Yes, sir," she says, clasping her hands in front of her to keep them from rubbing against her scars.

"Well someone deserves a fruit basket," he says.

"Sir?"

"I've been trying to make you get a life how many times now, Carter? I've lost count," he says. "Or maybe it's the promotion? If I'd known all I had to do to get you home was promote you, I'd have done it _ages_ ago." She flinches at the look in his eyes.

"It's just a little headache, sir," she says. "It's been a long few days."

"Ah," he says, and she knows he doesn't believe her. She tries not to blame him.

"I … I'll see you tomorrow, sir," she says.

"Sure," he says, smiling a little. She sighs, and reaches up to run her fingers along her forehead. They come away wet. She closes her eyes and hears whispers in the back of her mind.

She doesn't remember driving but somehow she ends up back at her house. She lays down on top of her bedcovers in her uniform, staring at the ceiling. The bedside lamp is off, but the setting sun casts splotches of red and orange along her cream walls. She thinks about calling Pete, but decides it can wait until tomorrow. There's a stack of his clothes on the floor. She heaves off the bed, picks them up, and lays them carefully in the bureau, in the drawer she cleaned out for him. He's coming to visit over the weekend (_baring alien invasion or the destruction of Earth_), and she knows enough to know her dreams would be worse the first few nights. Then they would fade, and she would go back to dreaming of pushing limits on her motorcycle, talking to her plants, gazing through the canopy of another world's forest...

She's always been able to dream safe, mundane things.

In a few days Pete should be fine. Daniel is the one who thrashes in his sleep, after all, calling out in dead languages for people she's never met. She doesn't know if the General has nightmares. Her only clue is the strange tick he develops along his temple when he's sleeping deeply. She supposes conditioned caution is too ingrained for him to call out in his sleep. Teal'c claims not to dream at all.

But Jaffa humor still eludes her sometimes.

She falls asleep just as the color fades from her walls, sliding in so gently she thinks the nightmares may pass by...

…_you're drifting down gray hallways … floors ceilings walls closing in on you … self-destruction patterned by the heaves of still, concrete stones … White coats tell you it cannot be done. It cannot be done. _

… _he can't be saved … _

… _you see him then, skin hair eyes soul pooling against bandages stained red with personhood and pus … And you ache inside, pain radiating from your chest in dull, throbbing whorls … a young voice inside your mind cries for fairness, but there is none. _

"_Because despite the fact that you've been a terrific pain in the ass for the last five years, I may have... might have, um, grown to admire you, a little. I think."_

_Not the best good-bye, but he understands it's all you can give. _

"_That's touching."_

"_This will not be your last act … on any official record."_

… _you hear a whisper then … "It won't, Jack … it won't.." _

_Face like stone, soul empty, it doesn't matter …_

… _he's just another one you cannot save …_

_And then he drifts away, his eyes closing and his body relaxing on the exhale of a liquid breath. You stare at the empty sheets, and in the sudden darkness of the infirmary you have the crazy thought that something else should have happened. _

… _you drift again … and see the death of your son in the mines of a forgotten off-world concentration camp …_

… _you think hell is not a lake of fire and ice as in the poem DanielJackson showed you, but a valley full of gray acidic dust that burns and scrapes your throat on every inhale. _

… _your son is brave, eyes gazing straight ahead as the fire flashes through his chest. His body does not fall, but folds down, pulled by the heaviness of rusted armor. His eyes are closed, and you imagine he is asleep, his face innocent and young as only a child at rest can be … and you feel a wild battle cry straining against your throat …_

_But a Jaffa does not rage._

_He takes revenge … until the old gods become … _

_But then your eyes open, and you realize it is not your son staring at the glowing end of staff weapon. You are surprised at the relief that spreads outwards from your heart … you straighten your back and wait. _

_You will die free. _

When she wakes her pillow is spotted with blood. She must have bitten her tongue during the night.

S

The next morning she goes to the infirmary and gets a prescription for headaches. The nightmares ease for awhile (_but not for long_).

At the SGC, she feels strangely aware, jumping at metallic creaks, doubting the truth of humming machinery and whispered words, so she looks up post-traumatic stress disorder on the internet. _Diagnostic symptoms for PTSD include re-experiencing the original trauma through flashbacks or nightmares, avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma, and increased sensitivity - such as difficulty falling or staying asleep, anger, and __hyper vigilance_. She memorizes them as she once memorized the periodic table long ago. She spends the rest of the evening working on a game plan for Dr. Mackenzie (_Show enough symptoms to keep him happy. Hide the rest_), knowing she can't stay under the radar for long. And despite the colonel's opinion, she doesn't think Dr. Mackenzie be easy to fool.

She just forgot to take into account the bizarre undertones that still manage to spell _normal_ at the SGC. No one notices anything is wrong.

Strangely she feels cross, irritated that the unknown thing crawling along her skin goes unseen. She never realized her acting abilities were that fine-tuned.

(_She can't help but think Janet would have noticed_).

S

She throws herself into work with a grimness that surprises even her.

She's not sure what it is that shocked her … the dreams or the sense of loss when she wakes. She wonders vaguely if it would be easier if she only dreamed things that actually happened to her. Instead, her ghosts reveal their fears wrapped in the weight a thousand year old guilt.

_This is what could have happened if they had failed_, they whisper.

_But Daniel and … and Ry'ac are alive_, she murmurs back in the voice of very young child. The ghosts stare at her, and she lowers her head.

Fifth gave her (_gave her_) their worst nightmares (_she dreams of hell and prison and Ba'al and wonders if they all happened because of her_) … and the things that never happened but might have been. In the cool dimness of her lab she cannot forget their choking, throbbing _emptiness_, writhing like some live thing in her chest.

It's even harder to forget when she goes off-world. She wonders if its selfishness (_another miscalculation_) that keeps her going anyway, or if her command sense is aided by having ghosts of past lives whisper their darkest fears. Their words press against her ears in the dark, until the night feels like a living presence wrapped around her.

At least when she's awake, they just stare at her, but she's waiting… waiting for Daniel to argue the morality of a particular decision (_barreling forward on the assumption they always have time to discuss the application of ethics_), or the General to interrupt her train of thought with finely-edged barbs sharp enough to sting.

Teal'c's ghost, at least, knows enough to keep his commentary to a minimum.

She wonders if a Jaffa can be canonized.

"Um … Sam?"

She looks up and sees Daniel peering around the corner of her lab door. She's hasn't seen him since he got the sling off his arm.

"Hey, Daniel," she says, smiling a little sadly. "How's your shoulder?"

"Oh, it's fine," he says, waving his arm around. For just a moment, her vision blurs and she sees the poisoning taint of radiation weaving between his fingers, but then she blinks, and his skin is whole and clean again.

He wanders around her lab and she knows he isn't here to discuss the possible outcomes of Anubis's escape by way of a Russian colonel she might have liked. It's a shame. She could have used the distraction. She can tell he's working himself up to something else. She wonders when she became so closemouthed he thought he had to.

"You missed lunch," he says finally. "And I thought maybe you'd like to grab a bite to eat."

It wasn't what she expected him to say, but she smiles and nods. He grins and she gets up to walk with him.

He has half a dozen books under his arm, and she can't help but lean over and scan the titles. He smiles at her, and she remembers the first days of discovery, the days of Abydos sun and blazing curiosity and Captain Doctor. She remembers the tingling excitement of I-understand-what-you're-saying in a room with more Stargate addresses than she could visit in a lifetime. With a handful of doctorates and twenty-something languages between them, such mutual intelligibility hadn't happened to her very often. It took her awhile though before she realized I-understand-what-you're-saying didn't necessarily mean I-understand-_you_ – that Daniel was sometimes so focused on the past (_because yesterday means known loss_), he missed the subtle nuances of present speech and gestures. She never could decide if he was conscious or not of his carefully preserved obtuseness.

But he looks at her now with such warmth in his eyes, she wonders if he knows about her ghosts. She takes a deep breath, and feels her dozenhundredthousand words crowding to get out when the General saunters into her lab.

"Hey, Carter, do you have the report ready from the Anubis debacle? The Pentagon is riding up my ass for misplacing a Russian colonel while we were on lockdown," he says, stuffing his hands in his pockets and looking at her expectantly.

She blinks and the words die in the back of her throat.

"Sorry, sir, but I haven't quite finished it yet," she says.

"I need it soon," he says, rocking back on his heels. "Oh, and some shrubs at Area 51 want to know when you'll be done with the booby-trapped ZPM."

"Well, sir, it's turning out to be more complicated than I thought. See, the crystals …"

"Ack, Carter!" he says. "I don't need the details."

"Sorry, sir. I'll see what I can do," she says. It's not the answer he wants, she knows, but when there are long stretches of time when she can't hear her own thoughts, alien technologies keep their secrets longer.

"Well, if anyone could single-handedly figure it out, it's you, Carter. With your eyes closed. The Goa'uld won't know what hit 'em," he says, smiling for the first time. "You're our secret weapon." Daniel chuckles and she manages a small, pleased smile.

They both leave. It's only after they're gone she wonders what Daniel was trying to tell her.

As she's finishing her report in the cool quiet of her lab, she rubs her eyes against grainy bits of sleep. She wishes Daniel had thought to bring her a cup of coffee. There's a cot in the corner where she crashes in the early hours of the morning, but its afternoon now, too soon for caffeine tremors and lightheadedness. While carefully holding the small ZPM, a hot ball of pulsing energy nests in her stomach, and she lifts her tired hands again. She'll be awake for hours now.

This ZPM could save Earth.

Assuming she can figure it out.

Hours later she stops to wonder if her nightmares tonight will be her own. She thinks she has enough material for a good one. The salvation of Earth often rests solely in I-have-an-idea. And she's always the _I_. Always. The General trained her that way. He twisted _there's always a plan B_ and _no one gets left behind_ so tightly in her reflexes that the salvation of Africa Asia Antarctica America Europe are her plan Bs, and the world population of six billion babies builders professors bakers teachers firefighters politicians soldiers criminals doctors sinners saints moms dads become the collective one of _no one gets left behind_.

As if keeping her team alive wasn't enough.

The General's ghost shrugs as the sudden rage that burns hotly in the pit of her stomach, and as she stares at him, she realizes that no matter how much he may care for her (_more than he's supposed to_), his first (_she hopes it isn't his first_) priority is to use her. Because she can work three months straight on a single problem, and end by rewriting the laws of physics. Because she can blow up a sun or send an asteroid through the Earth. Because she's the smartest person on the planet, and he can't afford for her to miss plan B.

She's his secret weapon.

The sad thing is that Daniel's ghost can find nothing to say in the face of her anger. Even he understands the necessity of the erasure of Sam Carter for the sake of the planet.

But months later, when she stares at her own face in a MALP video feed, she wonders if cool human pragmaticism will end by destroying them after all.

(_five … four … three … two …_)

Because she shouldn't be a weapon.

S

_That night she dreams of a hundred days turning into a thousand … of her body melting like cool water into the stone of a faraway lab … of staring into the dead eyes of a beautiful Abydonian woman she has never met …_

S

She meets the other her and remembers the painful thrust of mind-rape, nightmares, and unfamiliar memories all over again.

_She sees so much which isn't hers to see_ …

But she thinks Fifth took more from her than he gave.

She treats Samantha (_the General insists on calling her Not-Carter. She isn't sure if it's a good name_) like a battered woman. A girl trapped in a cycle of submission and the shattered remains of everything that makes a person whole. She knows abuse when she sees it (_it isn't clear in bruises, ripped clothing, glazed eyes, slurred speech, but in the million fragments of broken color she sees in her eyes_). She doesn't like to think her double may be reliving Jonas Hanson all over again. All Samantha needs is a push to get out.

But it's only when she sees what Fifth was doing to her that she understands. Samantha pushes fingers inside her mind, and she sees the concrete walls of the gateroom.

_Finish him. Do it. Finish him. You must break from your old life for your new life to begin. Do not disappoint me._

She stares into the eyes of General O'Neill and pulls the trigger. The gun hammers a sickening _pop pop pop_ and she tries not to choke on the bile pushing up her throat. The General groans once and she watches his body fall to the floor. There's a buzzing in her ears, but she hears the strangled gasps coming from her throat. The rest of the gateroom blurs into silence. Fifth gently pulls the gun from her hand, and she sees the gray walls of his ship again.

It isn't real, but she knows it could be.

Her double pulls her fingers from her forehead, and she feels the trickle of blood as old scars open again. She presses her hand to the wet skin, blinking the moisture from her eyes, and stares at the face looking back at her for a long moment.

This is more than a case of simple abuse (_had it ever been anything else?_).

She knows now what Fifth is doing. He knows a person is not the sum total of interior moments, but the reflection of other faces. The creation of a personality is the work of hundreds. She is who she is because of Mom Dad Mark Daniel O'Neill Teal'c General Hammond Janet Cassie. Destroy them and he destroys her. Isolate her from everything she remembered, everything she was, everyone she knew, and mold her into whatever person he fancied. Welcome to Cult Psychology 101.

And she had the gall to say Fifth was emotionally immature.

(_Even still, his tactics are brutal, efficient, and clear. There is no subtlety_.)

Her double knows erasure of self is the final outcome (_the only solution to Fifth's equation_) and can see no other alternative. "Now you understand. I can't go back to him. And I can't let him find me," Samantha says. Sam is smart enough to hear the implications. _You must destroy me_.

There is no plan B.

"We can protect you if you help us," she says, trying to think like a soldier and not a refugee from a war of her own making. The SGC runs on negotiation, a barter system, an eye for an eye (_a twisted sense of fairness forms the foundation for relations with every alliance and enemy_). Tit for tat and the whole world goes 'round.

"What do you mean?" Samantha asks. She knows what Sam is asking of her, but she needs to hear her say it.

But Sam misses the unspoken question (_she still sees Jonas Hanson's face in Fifth's_), and feels a ruthless impulse to exact revenge like she never could before. It simmers like a fire in the pit of her stomach. Neither one will not hurt her again. She finds a plan B, and damns the consequences.

Right now she is no soldier.

"Tell us exactly how he modified himself and the other Replicators. Help us make the disruptor work again," she says.

"I want you to destroy me," Samantha responds, shaking her head and moving back against the wall. "I can't help you destroy all the others."

_I can't help you destroy everyone like me_.

"Yes, you can," she says. Sam can see her own eyes burning in the reflection of her double's gaze. She will break them all. For both their sakes.

(_tick tock tick tock_)

S

It's really no wonder Samantha turned on both of them. Sam and Fifth created the same conditions for erasure of self, and the strain tore against who she was until there was nothing left. Fifth stole her past. Sam tainted her future. But they both asked for the same thing.

_Destroy who you are_.

She almost falls under the weight of another miscalculation.

"Teal'c, what have I done?" she asks, staring glass-eyed at the pewter-gray remnants of her double's burning determination.

"You cannot be held responsible for the actions of the Replicator," he says in a low voice, and she knows he doesn't understand. He gently takes her arm, and leads her back through the Stargate. Before she steps through, she bends down and scoops a small handful of silver dust. She stares at it, before closing her fingers tightly and feeling the abrupt coolness of the shivering wormhole.

The General is waiting for them at the base of the ramp. She is silent as Teal'c explains what happened in clipped sentences. She opens her hand and gazes at the grains in the palm of her hand.

"Bring back a souvenir, Carter?" asks the General.

"Yes, sir," she answers in a soft voice.

Back in her lab, she gently empties her hand into a sterile petri dish, and wonders if she became a weapon after all, if Fifth knew her well enough to know her need for revenge would drive her to ask Samantha for something she would not (_could not_) give. The General didn't want her to bring the Replicator particles back to her lab, but she has to find some way to fix her mistake. _Only this is not a mistake. It's a miscalculation … one Fifth expected her to make. She wonders what else he knew about her_. But she cannot tell them that. "She deactivated these cells when she separated them from her arm," she says instead.

"Can we be certain they will not become active again?" Teal'c asks, standing closer to her lab table than he usually does.

"She deliberately shut down the cohesive energy between them so that it would be more difficult for me to figure out how she made herself immune to the disruptor," she says.

"Now how do you know that?" the General asks, frustration making his words cut across her scars. The edges crack and bleed, but she doesn't blink.

"Because that's what I would have done." There isn't any other answer.

The General's shoulders drop. "Carter …" he starts. He doesn't know there's nothing left to say.

"Sir," she interrupts, "If you don't mind, I've got a lot of work to do. We've never had the opportunity to study human form Replicator cells before. If we can learn something from them, this won't be a total loss." The room is cold and she draws into the warmth of her jacket and the equipment humming quietly on the table.

She leans over her microscope and can't see the look in the General's eyes when he says, "This isn't your fault." They insist on believing in free will. _The choices of others are not your choices_, her mother used to tell her. But she remembers leaving him behind.

It all comes back to that.

"I'm not so sure about that," she says, trying to explain, but for the first time her dozenhundredthousand words are not waiting. She searches wildly for her ghosts, but they are standing in the shadows, staring at her silently, saying nothing. All she has left is a clinical recital of cause and effect. "Fifth came here because of me. She rejected him because she was made like me. Now we've got Replicators in our galaxy, and they're immune to the only technology we have that could have stopped them," she says, inexorably identifying the links in a chain of events which always come back to her.

"None of us correctly anticipated the actions of the Replicator," says Teal'c quietly.

She blinks and looks away, unnerved that her might-have-been is no nightmare phantom. _This is what you are_, Fifth whispers in her ear. "I thought she was afraid of him," she says. She thought Samantha was driven by fear as she was driven by fear. _This is what you will become_. "But really she just wanted to get rid of him so she could lead the Replicators herself. She killed him because she thought he was weak."

"Carter, she isn't you," the General says softly.

She is silent and Teal'c says, "O'Neill is correct. Though she shared your memories, her personality was altered."

She looks away and gazes at the ghosts hovering in the corner. Daniel meets her eyes and drifts forward, whispering to her what no one else will say. "But the fact is, she learned betrayal from Fifth, and he learned it from me," she says in his voice. Her lab is silent and they leave, Teal'c stopping to glance at her one more time before he walks away.

She gets home late that night, but Pete is there anyway. She remembers to put on her engagement ring before she sees him in the kitchen, trying not to wince at the simple pleasure he gets from seeing it on her finger. She helps him finish preparing dinner (_he's the only one to ever question whether she can really cook her way out of a microwave_), and they linger at the table, sipping glasses of wine, and talking about safe, mundane things.

_It's getting warmer outside. _

_Do you want a garden this year?_

_I could turn over the soil when I'm here next weekend. _

_We should get some deck chairs for the patio. _

_Gas prices are rising again. _

_We should think about finishing the wedding invitations soon. _

As she drifts to sleep that night, she wonders if that may be why she loves him. He doesn't mind secrecy as long as he knows half-truths. As soon as he discovered the basic outline of her job, he stepped back and never asked for more. She knows (_whenever she hums a certain song_) Teal'c's eyes tighten and Daniel shuffles and looks away. She asked her ghosts why, but they do not answer.

Ironically, it was Cassie who told her.

"They think he's a stalker," she said, plopping down on the couch one night in the middle of a movie.

"What?" she asked. It was only days after her engagement, and she planned a special night where she could tell Cassie the news in person.

"Pete," Cassie said. "They think he's a stalker. Well, Daniel thinks he's a stalker. Teal'c thinks he's a security risk."

"Oh," she said (_she didn't have to ask what the General thought_). Cassie reached for a handful of popcorn before she could think of anything to say. The answer is there, but she isn't sure anyone else would believe it …

_At least he cared enough to want to know_.

But as she curls against Pete later that night, something nags at her, like a misplaced variable in a long equation.

What else did Fifth learn from her?

If he thought Pete was so central, that she would leave the SGC for him, why didn't he try to break her double by having her murder her fiancé? What was it about the General that his death created the perfect conditions for a psychic break? The answer shoots across her mind, and she gasps from the force of it.

Fifth had known.

After her capture, she thought Fifth made a mistake, that he miscalculated, that he didn't go deep enough into her subconscious, that he didn't know her so well after all. He knew about a little girl blowing bubbles, and a last goodbye said on the floor of a broken ship (_how could he possibly not know_?). She questioned his hand-made future because it was the wrong person staring back at her across the breakfast table. Her future should not have had stables, but a small lake with a cabin hugging the edge. But he chose to give her what could happen, not what will never be, and she had _known_.

_This isn't real_.

But what if that was the answer all along?

What if he never _expected_ her to stay?

_Why are you doing this?_ she remembered asking.

_Because I love you_.

Even then, she wondered vaguely if his answer was too facile. But Orlin-Narim-Martouf had made her complacent to the occasion of alien declarations. She didn't stop to question Fifth's motivation (_the jagged thrust of unfamiliar memories and what-might-have-been dulling logic and intuition for days afterward_), even as the answers seemed too simple, too obvious (_could he have learned what it was to love from her? She remembers delirium tremors and sarcophagus withdrawal and something the real Daniel would never say … Maybe she really doesn't know…_). Instead she took Fifth at his word.

She's aware of the irony.

She stirs in bed. Her long-deadened scientific instinct awakens, and she does what she should have done from the beginning. _Question everything_. What if Fifth didn't really love her? What if he knew Pete wasn't at the center? What if he expected her to reject his hand-made future? She turns over on the bed, and feels Pete shift in his sleep next to her. The General's ghost supplies the last question, speaking for the first time in days. _What if Fifth knew he was going to die_?

She's done underestimating his intelligence. Fifth knew her, knew her better than anyone else. He created another her, one with no inhibitions and one driving impulse. _Lead her to race to domination_. Then he stepped back and watched as Sam triggered her double's raging ambition. And he knew she would trigger it. Because he set up the conditions himself. The foundation for Sam's instinctive revenge was set the day he shoved fingers into her mind and showed her things she never wanted to see.

Daniel looks at the General for a long moment. _Carter thinks pissing off a Replicator was a bad idea. She thinks Fifth planned the whole damn thing_, he says, supplying the tactical bottom line. Daniel's eyes widen. _Don't you think … I mean …_ _aren't you being a bit paranoid_? he asks. She doesn't know how to answer him.

_Question everything. Even the answers_.

He learned more than betrayal from her.

(_She's all too familiar with sacrifice of self_).

S

She returns to hell that night in her dreams.

… _the ground is covered in a greasy ash that makes it impossible for your boots to grip … you slip and slide, unable to balance as you search … gasping acrid dust until your throat feels raw and you feel the slimy trickle of blood down the back … your sides legs feet arms throb with a sharp, stabbing pain, but you keep running …_

… _they're calling for you … desperate pleas that make your eyes burn and sting … _

_I'm coming … Don't … _

Her screams wake Pete, and he holds her until she remembers the familiar touch of cotton sheets beneath her back and the smell of vanilla candles smoldering in the dark room. He doesn't ask questions, and she doesn't give an answer (_even though not a night goes by when she doesn't wake him with her cries_).

She can't decide if she appreciates the silence, or mourns that no one ever asks what's wrong (_would she have words if they did_?).

She drifts back to sleep just as dawn throws streaks of pink and yellow light across her wall, but not before she feels Pete leave the bed. She misses his warmth, but doesn't ask him to stay.

S

The only good thing about having a doppelganger intent on ruling the galaxy is that it keeps her busy (_even though there's nothing to do. The first move is Samantha's_). But at least she doesn't dream anymore (_for once her nightmare might-have-beens are less horrifying than real life_).

Of course, she may not be dreaming because she isn't sleeping.

She'll take short naps on her cot in the corner of her lab every so often. But even the General is too busy to notice her milk-white pallor and thin frame (_didn't I tell you once to get a life?_). Her skin feels tight and stretched, and she wonders when she'll be pulled so taunt, they'll be able to see through her, as she sees through ghosts drifting on the edge of her mind. She knows Pete is worried when he asks if she wants him to come see her, but she just says things are busy at work. It's been one of those weeks (_months … years_). Gives him carte blanch to finish planning the wedding. He acquiesces with a docility that surprises her (_the General would have pushed the issue_), and she can't help but wonder if he needs rest from terrified cries in the dark.

She doesn't hear from him for days, and goes back to laying on her cot, staring at the gray ceiling, pretending to sleep.

Her ghosts say nothing and she knows they're waiting (_like her_).

S

Zero hour comes with a swiftness that surprises her. She never expected it to end this way. Even now she doubts what happened, and wonders if the months leading up to this point are not a Replicator-created dream.

_Finding an ancient weapon behind a riddle door ... _

_Cobbling together an ad hoc alliance with Ba'al (her mind still doesn't understand) …_

_Igniting blue-water wormholes across the galaxy …_

_And Daniel … Daniel taken from beside her_ …

A fine mist of pewter-gray dust blows around her. The last remains of an entire race. She scrapes her hand along the jagged rocks of the Temple wall and stares at the blood oozing through the wound.

It's the one thing that feels real.

S

The only thing that keeps her from thinking her life is a Replicator-induced dream is the vague thought that Fifth's creation would be more elegant, the pieces joining together in clear, clean lines of logical simplicity. Artistic. Beautiful. Precise. But there is nothing elegant about watching the wreckage of her life spiral outwards (_she calculates the centrifugal force, betrayal and death equating x and y in perfect ratios written in white chalk_ _across a cracked and broken mind). _

She grips her father's hand and hears the constant drone of hospital monitors.

_I want you to be happy_.

She thinks that might be the difference. Because even as her father dies, he asks about her. She tries to remember the last time she asked Pete something (_are you happy?_) and comes up empty. Her ghosts stare at her, and she wonders how much she really knows. Maybe she never knew anything at all.

When he dies, she doesn't say anything (_what is there left to say_?). She kisses him on the forehead and leaves the mountain. The sun is warm, and she squints in the brightness. She gets in her car and starts driving, aimlessly, without direction, but finds herself slowing down in front of a little gray house with a sold sign in the front yard. Through the window curtains, she sees a yellow kitchen with white cabinets and hardwood floors.

And she knows.

She doesn't belong in this future.

"You were worth the risk. Don't say I deserve better. Can't get much better than you," he says.

_It isn't true. It was never true. _

"I wish I could believe this had something to do with your father. That you just needed time to sort things out."

She knows who he means, and suddenly she feels like laughing because he really doesn't understand. It's as if cries in the darkness and nighttime tremors are wiped from his memory. All he remembers are long glances and the smell of guilt and smoke from a back porch meeting she never could tell him about.

And he never thinks to search deeper (_there's more to the story_). "That's it?" she prompts.

"What do you want? You want me to get down on my knees and beg?"

He doesn't understand what she's asking, and she wonders for the first time if they ever really knew each other at all … She thought he would react differently … (_and this is why she can't stay_).

Pete is polite, but she can't help but flinch whenever he moves his hands. Her stomach feels hollow until Daniel whispers in her ear. _This is real_. And she remembers a raised voice in a yellow kitchen so many months ago. But Pete's face stays his own and he speaks in his own voice (_not the emotionless hum of simulated presence_). As he walks away, she sees everything clearly, as if she stepped outside after a spring rainstorm, and saw light reflected from millions of water droplets on leaves, grass, fence, trees.

She loves that he wanted to know. She loves that he doesn't ask. She loves that he wrecks the kitchen cooking. She loves that he was going to turn her soil over for a garden. She loves that he cares about safe, mundane, earth-bound things.

But it's not enough. It will never be enough.

(_And_ _for the first time, her unseen scars stay closed and clean_).

S

The briefing after Daniel returns feels more like a party than a military debriefing.

The General slaps Daniel on the back (_after Walter found him some clothes_) so many times Daniel finally tells him to stop, and Teal'c almost smiles. The meeting is unsurprisingly focused on Anubis. She is glad (_because her double's attempt to play the evil overlord seems childish against the mature machinations of a half-ascended Goa'uld_). Her hands clench in her lap when Teal'c finally asks what happened on the Replicator ship.

"We were concerned for you, DanielJackson, after you disappeared," he says.

"Yeah, what's up with that?" asks the General.

"Um, well, Sa- the Replicator thought I might have information about an ancient weapon which could destroy all the Replicators, which I, um, did. Only I couldn't remember it, so she reached inside my mind until she found it," he says. He's not looking at her, and she wonders how much the pursuit hurt him. She can't see any scars. (_But she knows that means nothing_. _Mental wounds leave few traces_).

"Well, would you mind letting us know why the bugs stopped coming after us there at the end?" asks the General.

"Yeah," says Daniel, smiling a little. "While she was digging around in my mind, I dug around in hers. See, she was so focused on what she was looking for she didn't even notice until I figured out a way to control the, um, bugs." Sam bites her lip, and remembers. _Single-minded to the point of social isolation_. _Too damn focused on a stupid tree to see the forest_. "But eventually she felt what I was doing, and I couldn't control them for very long."

She shifts in her seat and speaks for the first time, "Thank you, Daniel. You gave my … my father and I the time we needed to recalibrate the ancient weapon."

"Sure helped us out of a tight spot too," says the General.

Teal'c nods, "Indeed."

"Yeah, I'm just sorry I couldn't do more. She appeared in my mind at first as Oma, and it took me awhile to … to get my bearings," says Daniel. He still won't look at her, and suddenly she understands.

"She offered to share the ancient knowledge she found, didn't she?" The General doesn't ask how she knows this, and Teal'c bows his head.

Daniel nods slowly, and says, as if each word was an effort, "She said that together we could unlock the secrets of the Ancients. And I said no … although I was tempted." He looks at her for the first time, and she smiles tentatively. He gazes at her for a long moment, and then smiles back.

S

The cabin is larger than she thought it would be.

The General gives her his room, saying he'll bunk out in the guest room. Daniel gets the couch, and Teal'c offers to take a spot on the living room floor. Even though he doesn't need to meditate now, he still sits for long hours on the floor before sleeping (_and she knows he picks the spot he does because he has clear lines of sight to the front and back doors_).

In the dappled sunshine, her milk-white paleness becomes clearer, and Teal'c asks her if she is well. It's the first time anyone has asked since Fifth (_they knew better than to ask after the funeral_), and tears prick her eyes.

"It's just been a rough few days," she says, wondering when her might-have-beens became real (_a final answer on a back porch for what she's always wanted, a whispered goodbye to someone who only ever wanted her happiness, a parting of two strangers in front of a little gray house_). And she can't help but wonder how much of it she caused (_a betrayal, a cry in the dark, a ruthless desire for revenge_). She feels the suffocating weight of erasure loss sacrifice miscalculation.

Her ghosts stare at her and she knows she can't carry their failures too.

Teal'c stares at her, and then puts his hand on her shoulder. She leans into his hand for a moment. "I'm fine," she lies, and he nods.

That night she dreams of spider-webs and dripping poison and waking in a white box over and over again. She doesn't realize she's screaming in her sleep, until someone shakes her shoulder. When she opens her eyes all she can sees are glowing eyes and hands in her forehead and opened scars and blood across her cheek. She lashes out with one hand, keeping the other curled tightly around her stomach, and cries out. There are words in her screams (_a dozenhundredthousand words spoken in languages she doesn't know_), but she can't hear them. She only knows he wouldn't give her up. Kanan had, but he wouldn't. He wouldn't betray her.

_No one gets left behind_.

Finally, the buzzing in her ears calms, and she hears Daniel whispering the same thing over and over again, "It's okay, Sam. We're here. It's okay." She can feel the General gently stroking her back, and she leans against his shoulder and sobs. He puts a warm hand on her neck, and she feels another against her shoulder, and one on her knee.

When her breathing finally slows, Daniel asks softly, "Are you all right, Sam?" She rarely has nightmares, and he's never heard her cry out in sleep before. Daniel's the one who thrashes and cries.

"It was just a bad dream, Daniel," she whispers. When he doesn't move, she looks up and sees him staring at her intently. "What?" she asks.

"Sam, you were … you were saying things in your sleep … in languages I don't think I've ever heard you say you knew," he says finally. She tucks her head back in the General's shoulder and waits. "You were speaking in Abydonian … and Goa'uld … and in Arabic and in … some dialect of Ancient … I'm not sure which one. I'm not even sure I understood what you were saying at some points, but, um, most of the time you were calling for help … for, um, _our_ help," says Daniel, and she hears something in his voice she's never heard before. (_She wonders if Pete heard strange words in her cries too_).

"He showed me things … he showed me such awful things," she whispers. "And now I can't remember…"

"What can you not remember, ColonelCarter?" asks Teal'c gently.

"What the sky looked like the day my mother died … what my father said to me when I graduated from the Air Force Academy … what it felt like to go through the Stargate for the first time. I can't … I don't remember," she says.

"Sam … I don't understand. Why can't you remember? What are you seeing?" Daniel asks softly.

"My miscalculations…" she murmurs.

"Of what do you speak?" Teal'c tilts her chin so he can see directly into her eyes.

"I see the things I caused … things that happened because of me … and then I see the things that might have been if others made the same mistakes," she says.

The General sighs, "Carter, I know you're not trying to be cryptic, but that was extremely unhelpful, even for you."

She gives a watery sniff and whispers so softly, she can barely hear the words, "I see Sha're dying … and a prison in the desert, and Netu, and … and Ba'al. They take up space, and push and push, until my own memories drift away," The room is quiet for so long she wonders if they heard what she said.

"Sam, what do you mean?" asks Daniel carefully.

"Fifth, he … put things in my mind. The things I caused. And the things I can't change. In perfect order, cause and effect. But none of the memories are mine," she says. She doesn't have to explain any more than that. She's not sure if she should be grateful they know exactly which memories Fifth chose to share. Teal'c looks down and Daniel puts his head in his hands. The General moves away and stands with his back to her, hands clenched at his sides. She drops her head to her drawn-up knees and has the crazy thought that maybe Samantha wasn't the only one Fifth was trying to isolate (_they can't even look at her_).

"I … I never said anything because I thought the memories were better left … private … and unsaid," she murmurs. "But now I can't sleep because of the … things I see, and it's just too much." She starts to sob again. "And I was doing all right until everything just fell apart … The other me came, and my dad … died, and Pete and I called the wedding off ... and …"

"Oh, Sam," breathes Daniel. "When did that happen?"

"A few days after the funeral, before you came back," she says, wiping her eyes. "And now I'm crying on all of the General's sheets on the first vacation I've taken in God knows how long because I'm seeing things I never even had to experience. How twisted is that?" She laughs a little, and tries to straighten her back. Fifth can't take everything from her.

_The choices of others are not your choices_.

"Son of a _bitch_," the General says. She jerks her head up and sees a strange tick along his jawbone. She knows she's never seen him quite this angry before. She reaches her hand out, but he leaves the room, and no one knows what to say in the silence (_despite this, she feels oddly calm_). Teal'c bows his head and leaves, but Daniel ends by curling behind Sam, and holding her until she falls asleep.

S

She wakes briefly sometime after midnight, and moves her hand instinctively behind her. When she only feels cool cotton sheets, she opens her eyes. Teal'c is sitting cross-legged on the floor, a lone candle lit in front of him. The flickering light throws his shadow high against the wall. But she sees a point of light in the darkness of his irises, and closes her eyes again.

_She doesn't dream_.

S

When she opens her eyes in the morning, she thinks Daniel must have come back. He's sitting up against the headboard, cradling her head against his side, and trying to hold up a book without disturbing the arm she has thrown across his stomach. He puts his book down when he feels her stir.

"Hey," he says, and she stills. It isn't Daniel, but the General.

She's not quite sure what to say and finally settles on, "Good morning, sir." She winces at how casual it sounds, after everything that happened in the night.

He's quiet for a long moment, and then says the thing she least expected, "Kerry left."

"Oh my god, I'm so sorry, sir," she says.

He shrugs philosophically and says, "She said something at the end that made me think, made me think we didn't leave it in the room at all." He sighs, "She didn't have to be a genius to put two and two together."

He turns at looks out the window, and she whispers, "What did she say?"

"She asked if it was just the regs keeping us apart."

She stills so completely he can only feel her back moving up and down on each breath.

"What did you say?" she whispers.

"Nuthin'" he says, the corners of his mouth tipping up in a smile. "I don't do the whole talk-about-your-feelings thing." She smiles a little sadly, and waits for him to finish. He doesn't for a long time, and she wonders if soft whispers wrapped in early morning solitude will be the thing that breaks them.

But she refuses to fill the silence.

She's always been the one to try and talk (_except for that one time behind closed doors at the SGC_). She remembers calling him Jack after seeing a little girl blowing bubbles and his swift correction, she remembers going to his house early in the morning, expecting his words to become another language, and his distant small talk, she remembers the words not coming after Janet died and his soft "C'mere," she remembers trying to talk on a cold spaceship and his abrupt "I know." But did he really know?

She guesses it's her atonement for saying they should leave it in the room.

"Do you understand what I've become?" he asks suddenly. Her mind whirls and she tries to understand what he's asking. "After Charlie died … everything changed," he says, shrugging helplessly.

She tries to imagine what the death of her child would do to her. Her ghosts whisper that she might understand a little now. _When you have nothing, you make something else_. And he had no one. The SGC (_the country, the planet_) became his priority, what came at the top of his list. There wasn't any room for betrayal of his creed, and despite his propensity for bending the rules, it was always in response to a greater need. Protect his people_ (but she realizes suddenly that it's never been about abstractions. Like it is with her)_. And breaking the regs wasn't a high enough justification (_she thinks she should have told him after all. He knows about erasure of self_). It's more important for him to have her as Teammate. She feels saddened, and wonders how long it took him to find something to replace his loss.

"And you do … what you have to do because there isn't anything left," he says. She doesn't have to guess what he means now. She has his memories. She knows there's a side of him that chants _monster_.

"And I think I was afraid..." He was always afraid of what she would see if she looked too closely.

She reaches up and places her hand on his chest. She can feel his heartbeat beneath her fingertips. "But I've already seen, and I don't care." It's no worse than what she has inside of her. At the very least, Fifth showed her that.

He takes a deep breath and lays his head on top of hers. She smiles and drifts back to sleep.

S

When she wakes again, the sun is blazing through the open window. In the brightness, she can see no ghosts. She stretches and smiles at the warmth spreading along her skin.

Jack is leaning against the door, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt. "Feelin' alright?" he asks. She nods. She hadn't seen anything she wasn't supposed to in her sleep.

He grins and motions toward the door with his head. She sees for the first time that he has two fishing poles in his left hand. She smiles and reaches for her jeans.

S

She leans back in her deck chair and feels the sun on her face. She hasn't seen a single fish, but she doesn't care.

"We should have done this a long time ago," she says. They still speak in charged euphemism, but this time they both hear the perfect correspondence of word and meaning.

"Let's not dwell," he says.

She smiles and tosses her line back in.


End file.
